Carlos Sainz in Brazil: "We want to fight for Q3 and points"

Penultimate race of the 2018 Formula One season

Interlagos, November 8th 2018.- Carlos Sainz has arrived at the Autodromo José Carlos Pace, better known as Interlagos, to compete in what will be the penultimate round of the 2018 Formula One racing season: The Brazilian GP.

Carlos landed in Sao Paulo after paying a visit to Renault’s factory in France’s Sandouville (Seine-Maritime), where he had the chance to meet in person the workers. As he arrived at the South-American country, he was invited to take part in a promotional event of his sponsor Estrella Galicia 0,0.

Interlagos is one of the most historic and charismatic tracks in the Formula One calendar. It was opened back in 1940, although it didn’t hold its first championship Grand Prix until 1973. It hasn’t missed a single year since 1990.

Carlos’ first visit to Interlagos as a Formula One driver was in 2015, although he wasn’t able to take the start since he suffered a technical issue on his car. The 2017 race was an unlucky one too, since a rival damaged his floor and compromised his race. In 2016, though, he shone with a magnificent sixth place under the torrential rain.

Pirelli has made available the medium, the soft and the supersoft tyres for the weekend. Carlos will have one set of the hardest one, four of the soft one and eighth of the supersoft, the quickest, which is set to be a recurrent option both in Qualifying and in the race.

As in every Thursday prior to a race weekend, Carlos walked the track in company of his engineers and answered the questions of the media.

"The track is as it has always been. It’s better that they don’t touch it, because it is an old-school track. Formula One should take this kind of tracks as an example. There are a lot of ups and downs, just as in Baku or Austin, newer tracks but also good fun".

"We are set to start from a good baseline this weekend, but the characteristics of this track, which has many slow and medium speed corners, may return us to reality after the good job we have done in the past few races. For now, though, we want to think that we can do what we did in the United States and Mexico, that we can make it to the Q3 and fight for points. That is our intention".

"The team has worked very hard to extract the very last tenth of performance out of the engine and the set-up. In a grid as tight as this one, that makes the difference. Rain, though, would play in our favour, being less time flat-out with the gas".

The Brazilian GP will start tomorrow Friday with the two opening Free Practice sessions, which will start at 11:00 and 15:00 local time -14:00 and 18:00 Spanish time-. As always, you will be able to keep up to date with Carlos via his social media channels and his official website www.carlossainz.es.